Cloud Cult: Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)

As a band that has long championed green technology and energy efficiency (releasing albums on its nonprofit Earthology Records and planting a thousand trees to offset its carbon footprint), Cloud Cult hasn’t addressed its environmentalism until now. Recorded on vocalist/songwriter Craig Minowa’s organic farm in rural Northern Minnesota, Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) is an album rooted in the man/environment life cycle, with nearly every song framed by humankind’s ephemeral existence. “Now would be the time to see that your time is limited,” Minowa offers as a thesis on “Everybody Here Is A Cloud,” the song exploding into a crescendo of strings, tumbling drums and choral flourishes. But despite the fiddling-while-Rome-burns indictment that hangs over the album, the music is more spirited than somber. The solar shower of guitar delay and single-note synth spirals mirror the miracle-of-life sentiments of “No One Said It Would Be Easy” and the frantic swirl of piano chords and Celtic undertones on “Story of the Grandson of Jesus,” making up for the album’s more precious moments.